Karl Rove-Backed Groups Raised $325 Million in 2012 Cycle

WASHINGTON—Two Karl Rove-backed Republican campaign groups raised more than $325 million during the 2012 election cycle, a draft tax return shows, a record haul for an outside political group that for the first time eclipses the fundraising efforts of a national political party.

That total means American Crossroads and its nonprofit sibling, Crossroads GPS, together outraised the Democratic National Committee, which took in $316 million during the 2012 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending.

The Democratic Party as a whole was still ahead if you include its congressional campaign committees, and the party also benefits from the backing of organized labor. But the amount raised by the Rove-backed groups underlines a seismic shift in power and resources in American politics as “outside” groups start to rival the spending power of the Republican and Democratic parties during elections.

The trend helps explain the dwindling power of the national political parties on their members — particularly Republicans — who are becoming more willing to buck their national parties as they become less dependent on them for financing. Outside groups now perform many of the same functions that parties have traditionally exercised to support candidates including running ads, sending mailings and coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts, said Viveca Novak, CRP’s editorial director.

A draft of Crossroads GPS’s tax return, due to be filed on Friday, was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is the final piece of the puzzle that allows a full accounting of the total amount raised by the two Rove-backed groups during the 2012 presidential and Congressional election cycle.

The total revenue figure isn’t, in itself, especially surprising. It was already well-established that Mr. Rove’s operation had spent more than $300 million during the elections. But the tax return highlights just how big individual anonymous donations have become in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court rulings that helped give rise to outside political groups.

Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit arm the operation that allows for anonymous donations, raised nearly $180 million in 2012 almost entirely from 291 donors listed anonymously in the return who gave more $5,000 each. That works out at an average donation of around $617,000 apiece.

However, Crossroads GPS said there were a further 1,254 donors who weren’t listed in the return because they gave less than $5,000 each. Those small donors gave an average of a little more than $200 each, for a total of $259,000.

The biggest single contribution was $22.5 million. By contrast, individuals were limited by campaign finance rules to giving $30,800 a year to national party committees during the cycle.

The result is that it’s becoming easier for outside groups to raise large sums than it is for the parties, which must rely on a larger number of smaller donors. In 2012, for example, the DNC had 42,092 donors who gave more than $200 each. The Republican National Committee had 74,319.

Crossroads GPS itself made several donations to conservative groups, the draft return shows. The largest was $26.4 million to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.

According to its tax return, Crossroads GPS paid its president, Steven Law, $538,000 in 2012. Mr. Rove, an adviser to the group, isn’t listed as having earned any money from it.

A DNC spokesman said that President Barack Obama had won re-election despite being outspent by Republican groups. “Regardless of the influx of money, the thing that’s important” is the quality of the candidate and the message, he said. “It’s not just a numbers game.”

Correction: Crossroads GPS raised nearly $180 million in 2012, almost entirely from 291 donors who were listed in a draft tax return as having given more $5,000 each. Including smaller contributions, Crossroads GPS said it had a total of 1,545 donors. The initial version of this post incorrectly said that the entire $180 million came from the 291 big donors as it excluded the donors not listed in the tax return.

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